


King of Kings

by BesoBesoBesitos (CoronaTheBee)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Rough Sex, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:53:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24330130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoronaTheBee/pseuds/BesoBesoBesitos
Summary: Under attack by an Empire boarding party, a smuggler makes a desperate deal with a mercenary Knight of Ren.
Relationships: Ben Solo/Reader, Kylo Ren/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	King of Kings

Proximity alarms are wailing as I slip and slide down the ladder, dropping with a loud clang onto the grating below. The dim lighting and haze of mixed coolant and ambient heat make the underbelly of my ship difficult to navigate under the best conditions. Now, as another salvo batters the failing shields and the ship rocks violently, it’s nearly impossible. But I’m determined. I clamber the rest of the way to the cargo bay on hands and knees. 

Propped amongst the netting and mag-cables are rows of caskets. One stands apart from the rest, larger and wrapped in warnings in a handful of common languages. I slap at the panel on its front, desperate to key in the override sequence. Most slavers were stupid or cheap, or both. They generally left the stasis pods with their default programming—one that included a master code for rapid ‘thaws. This casket, of course, seemed to be the exception. 

An unusual number of locks and redundancy measures chained this one shut both virtually and physically. Whoever entombed this man wanted to be very very sure he wouldn’t wake up mid-flight. My fingers trembled as they flew over the panel interface. It was going to take every trick and bit of skill I had to outmaneuver these. 

My eyes dart over to the other caskets laying in solemn rows. Some of them had been with the big man’s lot. They might’ve contained fierce fighters, too. But more of them were likely to be simple laborers. Cracking them, figuring out just what I had to work with, and getting them oriented and on board with my plan was too risky. I didn’t want to be caught smuggling. Didn’t want to be caught at all. But if I was caught running Empire slaves to freedom in Wild Space—I shuddered.

The blood red symbol stamped dead center on the casket lid tells me all I need to know about it’s contents. A Knight of Ren is inside. The panel gives a long whine and the clank of lock after lock giving way begins. The pod’s lid splits and retracts. I only have the split second impression of an enormous frame before the man is moving. 

Time skips. In a blink, I’m pinned by the neck to the nearest bulkhead. He’s shouting something in a lilting dialect I’ve never heard before. Furious words I can feel rumbling from his broad chest, pressed as it is against mine. 

“I can pay!” I gasp. “Please!”

He quiets, draws back. My fingers are scrabbling over his forearm but it’s like trying to pry away durasteel. He doesn’t budge or even seem to notice my distress. His head cants to the side, his long knotted hair slipping away to reveal a pale skinned face. He scans his surroundings with such efficiency that he seems more machine than man. 

“What,” he asks in a hoarse voice, “is the job?”

“You speak Basic!” I babble, squirming against his hold. “Good, thank the Maker! If you’ll set me d—“

“Job.” He says again, rocking his weight forward until his face is a scant span from mine. Until I cannot avoid looking him in the eye.

“Being boarded.” I rush to explain. “Empire patrol caught me off guard. And if they see  those ,” I point my chin at the row of stasis pods. “I’m dead.” 

He seems to weigh something for a moment, and nods. “I name the price.”

When I open my mouth to protest he flexes the hand that frames my throat. Not tightly enough to cut off my breathing, but enough to remind me that it’s there. Still, I try to slip my fingers under his. To give myself a bit of room. He doesn’t budge. Not even when the ship rocks and a terrible grinding sound comes from overhead. 

A boarding party I realize. Blowing the seals on my docking door, if I’m lucky. Cutting through my hull if I’m not. 

“You accept.” He’s phrased it like a question, but there is no uncertainty in his voice. 

The grinding gives way to the distinctive sound of plasma torches. They’re destroying my ship. “Fine!” I hiss, squirming furiously. “Let go!”

He waits a moment more, dark eyes flashing toward my hips as I buck against him. I freeze but the light in his eyes has shifted. His focus is an almost physical touch as it slips over me, head to toe. 

A blast sounds and an ominous groan ripples through the ship. Before the shockwave has disappeared he’s gone, striding toward the ladder that will take him to the main deck. 

He’s fast, deceptively so for such a large man. I race to catch up as he calls back, “Weapons?” 

“There’s a locker, next to the cockpit!” I swing myself onto the rungs. He’s already strapped on what looks like every blaster I own by the time I pop my head up into the main level. 

He pauses, boots level with the tip of my nose. “Stay below.” 

“No!” I plant my hands and leverage myself up to sit on the main deck. “It’s my ship and I—“

He doesn’t wait to hear what I have to say. Instead he marches toward the docking zone. “Then stay out of my way.” 

He backs against the wall closest to the short hall that leads to the dock hatch. For a moment he listens and takes silent inventory of ship interior. He waits until the first pair of Troopers pass through, headed for me as they shout, “Freeze!”

He drops them both without moving from his post. He swings the blaster and catches the next Trooper in the side with a shot that rips right through and ricochets out of sight. 

“Repairs come out of your pay!” I shout, cringing as the round pings dangerously near the engine housing. 

He doesn’t so much as twitch. His face is expressionless. Now that he’s lost the element of surprise, he steps out from the wall and kneels. He braces my largest blaster like a rifle and fires several bursts into the hall. 

The firefight is brief but intense. The Knight eliminates what sounds like a full squad of Imps. The muzzle of the blaster is smoking when he drops it. Overheated. He draws a one handed blaster next and steps back to a sheltered position, laying down suppressive fire. 

A moment later, a tight formation of Troopers appears in the doorway. They’re flanked by a pair with gleaming black armor. 

The Knight moves so quickly my eyes can’t track him. One moment he’s across the deck, picking at the edges of the squad. The next he’s hauling me bodily toward cover. 

“Price just went up.” He says gruffly. He fires blindly backward, rattling the pair of Troopers who were stalking closest to us. 

It doesn’t deter them for long, though. Soon the Troopers are hemming us in behind a support truss. I crouch, flinching when a shot splashes into the beam separating me from the Death Trooper squad. 

He shows me a blaster pistol and I’m startled to realize it’s the one I’d tucked into my belt before working on his pod. “That’s mine! How did you-“

He shakes the hair out of his eyes and gives me a hard stare. “You know how to use this?” 

“Yes.” 

“Shoot to kill.” He stands abruptly, firing off another volley to buy us time. Then he presses the pistol into my hands. “Don’t get caught.”

He stomps hard on the grating at our feet, kicking at the panel he knocks loose until there’s enough room for me to fit. He drops me in without another word and lifts the grating back into place. With only the light that can slip through the mesh, it’s a dark and claustrophobic crawl through the cable chase. But eventually I’m beneath the feet of the Death Troopers. I raise my pistol, ready to fire through the gaps of the deck. 

Then a pipe so brightly green it nearly glows catches my eye. I dart another look up to the elite troopers, still firing to keep the Knight pressed down while their squad works on flanking him. If I caught them by surprise, maybe I would kill one. The Knight could probably kill the other. Provided that he could work his way through the rest of the unit. The numbers were stacked heavily against us.

Unless. 

I turn toward the neon colored pipe. It contains a supercooled liquid. The coolant was used to bathe the compressors during long hyperspace relays. And uncondensed at room temperature, it’s a gas. A very poisonous gas. A plan begins to form as I crane my neck in the tight space, struggling to orient myself. 

There’s a storage crate near the galley that has rebreathers. I squirm until I can tuck my pistol back into its place at my belt and crawl as quickly as I can toward the far corner of the ship. The sound of fighting—shots and screams of pain—plus the thundering feet that shake the grating overhead make me clammy with nerves. But soon enough I’m lacing my fingers through the panel directly above me, crouching to gather my strength and shoving up with my shoulders until I can slip through the gap I’ve created. 

I try to stay as low as possible, tossing open the crate and combing through the junk inside. My hands slip over the odds and ends until finally I find them, wedged beneath a worn spanner. I slip one between my teeth and palm the second one. 

The Knight is still behind cover, but I can see a ring of fallen men that hadn’t been there when he’d shoved me under the grating. A flash of white armor behind him catches my eye. We weren’t the only ones getting creative. One of the Troopers had played dead to get closer to his position. 

I glance back down toward the crawl space below deck and hesitate. I need to get the rebreather to the Knight and I need to puncture the line. The Knight can handle himself. But the Trooper, now pulling himself slowly into a crouch, seems to be in his blind spot. 

“Kriff.” I curse and draw my pistol. I line up the shot and squeeze the trigger. The bolt of light sails past the Knight and catches the Trooper in the breastplate. 

Dark eyes catch mine from across the fight. He looks pissed. I frown back and heft the spare rebreather, showing him the device before throwing it as hard as I can in his direction. 

“Hey!” A Trooper shouts. I whirl but not in time to dodge his grip. He catches me by the arm, twisting so that I lose my grip on the pistol. I scream through gritted teeth. I am not going to be taken captive, especially not by a squad led by Death Troopers. 

I go limp in his hold. The sudden dead weight throws the Trooper off balance and I manage to land a solid kick to the back of his knee. He crumples beside me and we grapple for his blaster. When I wrap my hand around the trigger guard, he grabs the barrel and manages to straddle my chest. I give another smothered shout, bracing my feet to throw him off. 

A shot skims the the Trooper’s helmet, so close to a kill that it leaves a black streak of melted plastoid. He panics, shoving down hard and slamming my head into the deck. I fight through the ache blooming in the back of my skull—twisting the blaster until the muzzle is in the gap between the armor that covers his hip and the bottom of his chestpiece. I fire and the Trooper slumps aside. 

I rush to grab my fallen pistol, tucking it back into its holster and toss the stolen blaster down into the crawl space. I glance back toward the fight and see that the Knight has managed to kill one of the Death Troopers but he’s still perilously close to being overrun. I can’t make out rather or not he caught the rebreather either. But I can’t afford to wait for a clear view. 

Rather than risk another Trooper catching sight of me, I drop back below and get to work on releasing the gas. The pipe that carries the coolant, though, is reinforced. To prevent accidentally killing everyone onboard with a leak, I remind myself as I bash at a point where two lengths join. It’s a good thing, generally, that there’s no weak points. I pause to check my progress and am frustrated to see that I’ve barely dented the housing. I pull in a sharp breath, struggling to ignore the pain radiating from the knot forming on the back of my head. 

Think. Think! Can’t use a torch. That could ignite the gas. I squeeze my eyes shut. I could shoot it. Wouldn’t risk an explosion but I would be trapped in a crawl space with the ricochet. 

The screech of blasterfire is so loud. The Troopers are calling orders back and forth. He has to be running out of luck. Before I can talk myself out of it, I squeezebehind a bend and take aim. The shot hits the pipe and flashes back before I can duck. It sizzles past my ear so closely I can feel the skin blister from the heat of it.

Pressure inside the pipe escapes with a hiss, spraying a violet liquid that rapidly evaporates into colorless gas. I backtrack, wriggling back out of the crawl space in time to see the closest Troopers begin to drop to the deck. The Knight and the last Death Trooper are the only two left standing. Must have scrubbers in his helmet. I realize. 

The glimmering poison pools around their knees like low lying fog as they face off. They each have a vibroblade. It’s too long to be called a knife, but short for a sword. They’re identical. The Knight must have picked his up from the fallen Death Trooper. By the way he holds he blade in an effortless backhanded grip, he’s familiar with them. He tucks the blade back against his forearm and crouches into a defensive stance. 

The Death Trooper moves first. He lunges toward the Knight who flows past him. The Trooper stumbles and blood hits the deck. His thigh is gashed horribly as he limps backward. The Knight follows him slowly, and his broad back shields whatever finishing strike he makes. But in a matter of moments, it’s done. 

The Knight flicks the blade to inactive and turns. He gestures at me with the hilt and rasps, “Fee doubled.”

I blink. “Doubled to what? You never named a pr—“ 

But he doesn’t let me finish. Instead he glares at the battle damaged hull. “Is there a head in this junk heap?”

I bristle. The King of Kings is not a junker. Rather than argue, I point furiously at the door just beyond the tiny galley. He ducks inside and I can hear the sonic shower whine to life almost immediately. I mutter angrily to myself as I begin the dirty job of spacing the dead Troopers. 

I’m not sure how long I work at it. I’ve patched the coolant line and I’m soldering the docking aperture when the Knight reappears. I nearly drop my plasma torch. The ragged man who’d appeared from the stasis pod is gone. His dark hair is combed back from his face and he isn’t wearing a shirt. 

I can feel my cheeks heat and I’m suddenly glad for the face shield I’d pulled on before I started to work on the repairs. It’s opaque and it makes me feel a little less embarrassed about the fact that I can’t seem to look away from his exposed skin. Every one of his muscles is toned and defined. He dips close, into my personal space and my thoughts scatter. 

“What’re you doing?” I ask, swaying backward. 

“How did you find my pod?”

I shrug. “Dumb luck.”

He crowds closer, bracing one arm overmy head and towering over me. “Try again.” 

“There’s nothing more to it.” I cross my arms defensively. He’d already seen the other stasis pods and the Imps. Still, it’s against my every instinct to admit: “I’m a free runner. I smuggle slaves out of the Empire.” 

He grunts an unimpressed sound. In a blink, he snatches the face shield away from me and scans my expression. “Doesn’t explain how you found my pod.” 

I stare hard at the center of his chest, desperate to ignore the ridges of abdominal muscles just inches below. “There’s nothing else to say. An informant gave me coordinates. I scooped the pods from the dump site and was headed back to Wild Space when the Imps locked on to the ship.” 

His eyes narrow. “That’s never happened before.”

“A full squadron plus two Death Troopers hunting me down?” I raise my eyebrows. “No. I’m not worth that much.” 

He nods. “We need to dump my casket.” 

I trail after him as he heads for the cargo hold. Watching the muscles of his back move as he walks makes following his logic even harder. “What? Why?”

He levels me a look like he suspects I might be a laser brain. “Because it’s tagged.”

That made some sort of sense. He was much more likely to be carrying a kill-on-sight bounty than I was. And the Imps had appeared shortly after I’d taken him onboard. I peer down into the hold as he hauls the stasis pod toward the aft airlock. “Wait!” 

If he jettisons the casket, there’s nothing that can contain him onboard. Not, I thought, that I believed I had a stars-crossed chance of getting him back into the pod if he didn’t want to go. It would also make passing through checkpoints and port-of-calls considerably harder. If he wasn’t in suspended animation, he was going to have to pretend to be crew. 

Unless he didn’t plan to stay long. 

A pit forms in my stomach. Not because I want him—to stay. I hurriedly add. I’m concerned about what sort of payment he expected. Free running was a dangerous business but it paid very little. So little it verged on philanthropy. I bounce on my toes, anxious as I watch him load the casket into the waste chute. He slams the release valve and the casket is gone. 

I’m stranded with a Knight of Ren. 

I’m picking at the drying blood at my temple when he reappears on the main deck. He’d lingered in the cargo hold. Inspecting the other pods for trackers, I assumed. A large hand wraps over my nape, tangling in my hair. I freeze, too surprised to be afraid of the fact that a man twice my size and trained to kill is palming the back of my head. He tilts my head into the light. When a rough fingertip brushes the knot that’s formed from the fight with the Trooper, I flinch. 

“Do you have bacta?”

I try to nod but he’s still controlling the movement of my neck. So I lick my lips and answer. “Yes.”

He doesn’t notice that my voice is breathy. Or at least he doesn’t comment on it. He just says curtly, “Then use it.”

The hold disappears. I roll my shoulders against the tingling sensation that his touch leaves behind. 

We manage to avoid each other for a while after that. I finish the repairs and basic cleaning, setting a new course for a Rebel-friendly planet. I’ve just stepped out of the sonic shower booth, clean as I can get for the night when I see him again. He’s sprawled across my bunk. Nude, at least from the waist up from what I can see above the sheets. They’re pooled at the dip at the base of his spine. 

“This is my bunk.” I clutch the towel I wrapped around me tighter, though he doesn’t lift his head from his arms. “You’re in my bunk.”

“It’s the only bunk.” 

I scowl. His gravelly voice isn’t going to distract me. “No. There are fold out racks.” I jerk my head toward the hall. “In the hold.” 

He shifts, revealing one long and heavily muscled thigh. Nude, my brain chirps unhelpfully. Fully nude, it would seem. 

“Won’t fit.” 

I stare hard at his profile. There’s no way I can make him move. But I can’t resist adding, “Room and board comes out of your pay.” 

I kick at the storage locker at the head of the bunk, pulling it open with my toe to keep my vice grip on the towel. The quarters are so narrow that my hip is nearly brushing his arms where they lay folded around my pillow. I grab the first set of clothes I touch, balling them under my arm. 

Something brushes the sensitive skin behind my knee as I retreat. I skitter back, headed toward the refresher for privacy while I dress. A tug on my towel stops me. I stumble to a stop, slapping at the widening gap that threatens to bare my entire left side. The clean clothes flutter to the floor. I blurt a Huttese curse. 

He tugs me back to stand between his thighs. Sitting up, his massive frame seems to make the bunkroom shrink. He’s decent, the covers bunched over his lap, but I don’t let myself stare long enough to see if he’s as effected by the situation as I am. I can feel my skin tingle with awareness, hyper sensitive to the closeness of all of his exposed skin. He reels me in until I’m close enough he can catch hold of my nape again. 

“Did you treat this?”

I nod. His dark eyes slip over my face before he tips my head to inspect the bump. “Feels better already.” I swallow and babble on. “I can barely feel it, and the headache is gone.”

His voice was already low, but when he hears how breathy mine is, it manages to fall another octave. “Shouldn’t have come up from where I stashed you.” 

Stashed? I shake my head. “I was just going to shoot the squad leaders from below. Then I saw the pipe and thought that would be faster.” I bite my lip and decide to press my luck. “And since I dropped half those Troopers, maybe your fee should be prorated.” 

A muscle ticks at the corner of his mouth. “That so?”

He pulls his hand back with a parting tug at my hair. I’m caught off guard and gasp, biting off a moan. 

He shifts, arms braced on his thighs and hands fisted. His eyes are hooded as he watches me, waiting for something. 

Waiting for me to make a move. I trace the flicker of muscle in his forearms with a fingertip, admiring the shape of him and his restraint as he holds himself still. Slowly, cautiously, I take a half step closer into the cage of his body. 

It’s all the encouragement he needs. His hands wrap my waist and lift me to straddle his waist. He flexes his grip as I rock my hips closer to his, pressing close. He makes a low sound against the base of my throat. When I arch my back to give him access, he bites and licks a trail from my collarbone to the hollow of my throat and down. 

I anchor my hands on the ridge of muscle on top of his shoulders and set a slow rhythm of forward and back, up and down. I can feel his length against the seam where my right leg meets my body. He’s slightly off-center, not quite where I ache the most, but the friction is still enough to make me draw a shaky breath. 

He shifts his hold, letting me set the pace as his hands wander over my body. He starts at my ankles, folded neatly alongside his thighs. He traces the bones with a calloused touch, trailing up until he can palm my hips. I lose track of his hands when his mouth finds the tip of my breast. He works it into his mouth, flicking with his tongue until I melt. My rhythm stutters and he nips, hard. 

I suck in a breath and struggle to focus. I move again, restarting each time he switches to lave attention on the other breast. When I squirm he only spreads his thighs wider until I can’t get enough leverage to avoid his mouth. Soon they feel swollen, sensitive with over-stimulation and when he pulls back to look at them I know they’re flushed red. 

He rings his fingers around my waist again, spanning it, then presses me back into the bunk. The towel and the sheets are gone, kicked aside. It’s only the slide of his skin over mine as he catches the lobe of my ear between his teeth. He bites down slowly as he aligns himself. When he pushes no further, I wrap my legs around his waist and slip my hand between us. 

It’s dark, but I can just see his expression when I slip my hand around the base of him. His eyes slip shut and his jaw clenches. When I pump my hand once, twice, he makes a sound so low I feel rather than hear it. And when I press him into place, his control frays. 

My hands are suddenly pinned above my head in one of his. His free hand frames my throat like he had only hours ago. This time his thumb presses my chin up and aside. I pull in a ragged breath as he rocks into me. It takes three long strokes for him to work me open. Until he’s pressed flush against me. He rocks without pulling back, grinding himself against the bundle of nerves at my core and I shiver. The pleasure of it so soon after the stretch of taking him in is overwhelming. 

My legs and hips twinge as I spread my legs as widely as I can to cradle him. It leaves behind a warm burn, like after a long run. The sensation mixes with more pleasure as he sets a brutal pace. With my head pressed up and back, it’s hard to keep myself contained. To be quiet. The feel of all he does to my body is heightened because I can’t see anything but his tight expression as he moves over me. 

An orgasm washes over me suddenly. I can feel him slow, stroking steadily and watching my face as I ride out the high. My ears are still ringing as he pulls out, turns me over and pulls my hips up and back. He slips back in and I groan. The angle combined with his girth makes me feel even fuller. Then he settles onto his knees and gives a push that makes my toes curl. The spot he hits makes the aftershocks of the first orgasm build into something almost continuous. I bury my face into the pillow and press back into his pistoning hips. 

His hands tighten, jerking me back harder and faster than I can manage alone. The world narrows down to the storm of sensation that is building again. All I can hear is the creak of the bunk as he slams into me, and the low groan as his rhythm slips. He’s close, I realize faintly. The thought makes me pinch my knees together and tip my hips back. The shift must tighten my grip on him because he locks his arms and slams home so hard I scream with pleasure. 

He slips one hand under me, crossing my chest to grip my opposite shoulder. The other presses flat against the base of my spine as he rolls his hips slowly, deliberately. His breath fans against my jaw and he lines his cheek up with mine. He buries his mouth against the vulnerable skin beneath my ear and murmurs, “Tell me what you want.”

I pull in a breath through my nose. “More.”

He gives a few thrusts then slows again. I groan and try to speed him up, canting myself back but he presses his chest into my back until my upper body is flat against the bunk. I can feel the flash of his teeth against my cheek as he grins. “Be specific.”

“More.” I whisper. “And harder.”

“Can’t hear you.” He says, grinding so achingly slowly that I see stars. 

But it’s not enough to push me over the edge and he knows it. I whine a sound that is so pathetic that I try to curl away from him. He draws back and slams home with a single thrust. I can’t control the moan that erupts from me. The hand at my back fists in my hair and he tugs me up to my knees in front of him. His body is wrapped around mine and he twines his arms under mine. His forearms brush my tender chest and I moan again. My head falls back to his shoulder and he grips my shoulders. 

“Tell me what you want.” He curls his arms and I can feel his body flex around mine as he thrusts once, twice. Then stops. “And I’ll give it to you.” 

“Fuck me harder!” I shiver as he slams into me, rewarding my shout with a series of thrusts that make me scream. 

“Again.” He growls into my ear. 

I let go, screaming when he strokes the spot deep inside. Over and over. I beg for more. 

Times slips past me as he moves around me, inside of me. Until I feel him thicken, feel his hips jerk abruptly. 

“Come with me.” He commands, fingers dipping to touch where we meet. His callous drag over the soft skin and the sensation is too much. It’s the shove that sends me careening headlong into another finish. 

I come so hard my vision dots and my head goes fuzzy. He finishes, too, and I can feel it slipping down my thigh as he drops us both to the bunk. He seems spent, but the orgasms seem to have had the opposite effect on me. I’m suddenly jittery with energy. I press my legs together, scooting toward the edge of the wall mounted bed. I drop off the bunk and scoop up the fallen clothes. As I slip toward the refresher, I glance back. He’s sprawled again, this time with an arm slung over his eyes and without a blanket. And considerably messier than I found him. 

Right, probably not a cuddling type. I tell myself, shouldering my way into the tiny refresher. I drop my bundle of clothes into the sink basin and key in a double cleanse sequence in the sonic shower. I step in and shiver as the laser light flares. The smell of ozone fills the booth, and the strange chirp of the system working masks the sound of the door opening. 

It isn’t until I step out that I realize the Knight has followed me. The Knight, I think to myself a little hysterically. I don’t even know his name. I freeze, folding door of the sonic shower still pinched in my grip. 

He lazes against the doorframe. He’s pulled on the same fitted pants he had when I’d thawed him but he’s still shirtless.He watches me hesitate behind the door, obviously embarrassed that I’m nude. “Late for that.” 

I roll my eyes toward the ceiling and step out into the tiny space. He was right, but I’m not going to admit it. Instead I hop into my leggings and ask, “What’s your plan?”

He’s silent while I pull on a ragged tunic emblazoned with the branding for my favorite noodle stand on Naboo. A strand of cartoon yobshrimp are printed below the logo. I press my eyes shut against the second flare of embarrassment. He does not care what I’m wearing, I remind myself. I offered him a job and then we blew off some steam. 

He shrugs. He eyes the offending shirt and asks, “If I ask for food, does it come out of my pay?”

“Probably.” I shrug back. “You’ve never told me how much I owe you.” 

He moves just enough to let me brush past him and trails behind me as I lead him back toward the galley. “When I’m paid, I’ll go.” 

“Simple as that?” I ask. 

“Simple as that.” 


End file.
